October 3rd 2019
Boys visit authors at literary event
Boys from the Pre-Prep, Year 4 and Year 5 all visited the Henley Literary Festival this week.
Year 5’s trip was to Christ Church where the boys saw the brilliant M.G Leonard, author of the Beetle Boy series. She had loads of energy and offered a lot of encouragement, especially to reluctant or unconfident readers and writers. Year 5 really enjoyed themselves and left very enthusiastic about how beetles are helping us without our even knowing it - the image of being saved from Australia drowning, by dung beetles, will linger...
Year 4 took a trip to see Michael Rosen and he was as brilliant as we had all expected him to be. It was a very interactive session and, as the boys have been reading some of his poetry and verse in class, they were finishing his sentences for him! Mrs Symonds was a bit worried about this at first but it soon became clear that he is used to this and really appreciated their enthusiasm. He spoke to Mr Sage afterwards and said how much he had enjoyed Moulsford’s participation. We came away with a set of signed books for the Year 4 classrooms and many happy boys.
The Pre-Prep headed off to the Literary Festival on Thursday. Years 1 and 2 saw Francesca Simon, author of the Horrid Henry series. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of her famous character, Francesca (who surprised us all by being American!) told the boys about her life and then read one of her new stories ‘The Zoom of Doom’. The boys enjoyed hearing her speak and several of them were brave enough to put up their hands and ask her a question.
The Bobcats went to see Joseph Coelho and Robyn Wilson-Owen. Both the author and illustrator read the book ‘No Longer Alone’ to the children, who then got involved by making storm noises and joining in with repeated phases ‘I’m not shy’ and ‘listen’. The children also drew pictures of who helps them not to feel alone.
We are very lucky to have such a great literary event on our doorsteps and hope to visit again next year.
